I am Aarihant Aaryan! Welcome to the Iron sharpen Iron newsletter,
I share my weekly homework from my startup journey, learning about human behavior, and sometimes decoding industries and business models for fun.
I can’t control my curiosity :) )
It’s been close to a month since I wrote my newsletter, well this is what happens when you have too many life events in a month.
what do Indians pay for? This is a question I have been having for some time, Many just rub off the question saying - India is a price-sensitive market, it is just being lazy in thinking - Instead of thinking of India as a price-sensitive market, think of India as a market that makes most of the spends on core human motivations.
and if you are active on Twitter or LinkedIn you definitely know Indians pay for status, mating success, or life events.
But that’s a surface-level answer, I’ll share a few underrated products with you, that’ll amaze you.
Voice Club:
What they are solving:
In India, talking to the opposite sex is treated as a shame - Most boys and girls aren’t allowed to talk to each other, if you go to tier 2,3,4 regions the gap between boys and girls significantly increases
but as we grow, we have so much in life that’s happening that we want to share with someone most likely it’s an opposite sex
But it’s a nightmare for a person to find someone from the opposite sex and talk
It’s so hard for the consumer to find someone (discovery problem) → Don’t know what to text or how to initiate a conversation ( cold start problem) → you don’t know if another person will reply or not (conversion problem) → even if everything goes well and a conversation is made, you don’t know if all that you have shared will be safe or not (problem of trust)
Well now what voice club does is extremely interesting, It is an audio platform - you can talk to people of the opposite gender anonymously (your name or phone number is not revealed, also Mostly on this platform men are talking to women) for every minute the user talks they pay 5rs (1min = 5rs) they are clocking more than INR70,000 in revenue every day.
“Remember this tier 2/3/4 folks that are paying”
CRAFTO:
Crafto is a product by Kutumb, Abhishek co-founder & CEO is one of the best product guys I have met in India, the way he thinks is something that I admire.
What is crafto solving:
Most of our parents and relatives in India keep sending good morning & greeting messages on WhatsApp, Facebook, WhatsApp Story, and every other platform.
Folks at Kutumb ( Kutumb is like Reddit for India) observed the same behavior that users who are from tier 2/3/4 regions were hiring designers and paying 30 to 50rs per design every day so that the user can post their own greetings or wishes the Kutumb app and every other social media.
So they made an app called Crafto I call it “Canva for Bharat”
Users can write their own quotes and greetings on pre-made templates and share them for free but the user will have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription if they want their picture on the template or their own CTA.
They’re clocking crores of revenue per month, their retention is off the charts
Astrotalk:
What is Astrotalk solving:
Astrotalk is similarly solving what voice club is solving, they solve for discovery, connection, and convenience - connecting to a verified, trustworthy and reputed astrologer is no longer a hassle because of Astro talk.
Astrotalk is a proper hope platform, it enables consumers to chat, call or do live video call with astrologers - they charge users per minute basis. For an audio/chat/live call the consumer is charged 10rs to 30rs per minute, Astrotalk as of date clocks 1 crore in revenue every day but now there are many astrology apps in India - comparatively the market is also extremely huge.
The paying customers aren’t just folks from Tier2/3/4 but users from metropolitan cities - Consumers really want to know about their future irrespective of their status
Pratilipi:
In India, there has been so much misconception that people don’t like to read - people don’t pay for a reading, and they also assume that users have a shorter attention span, they just have a higher bar due to an abundance of choices.
Pratilipi has proven it wrong - Pratilipi is like a multi-content platform - they own apps where users can listen to content (Pratilipi FM), read content (Pratilipi), read comics(Pratilipi Comics).
Specifically mentioning Pratilipi, it’s a multilingual reading app think of it as audible for all Indian languages, they help users to read fictional and non-fictional content in the most engaging way.
On Pratilipi, An average user spends 90mins reading daily, an average subscriber spends 3.3 hours reading with my assumption they should be having more than 50 million monthly active users
50% of Pratilipi subscribers come from metro cities, 46% come from non-metro cities and rest 4% of subscribers are NRI’s.
Kuku Fm / Pocket Fm:
KUKU FM and POCKET FM (Both of them have raised $140M+ together ) are wonderful products they are audio platforms that have book summaries or entire books in an audio format, that fit their consumer’s lifestyle pretty well - both these apps have 10cr+ downloads and millions of paying users.
Kuku FM and Pocket FM are clocking $25+M in revenue
They are working very well because they sell aspirational content and also audio fits their users’ lifestyles pretty well, they are not big hurdles for the end user.
I assume today’s newsletter gave you an understanding of what Indians pay for :))
Also, something special happened this week :)
I met the Ivan Founder of Notion, after 3 years :) A cold DM can do anything!
I had a conversation with him and asked a few questions - his responses were amazing, sharing them with you here
How do you get ideas?
Ivan: Read a lot of books, watch movies - do something that gets you exposure, exposure helps you to identify problems or you can copy ideas from other segments and try to do in yours
How do you approve or disapprove ideas?
Ivan: ah that's a tough question bro, just launch numbers will tell you the truth
How to become better at decision-making?
Ivan: write down the possible outcomes of your decisions and always reflect back on them - ask yourself why it worked or why it didn't
People operate with low trust, how do you make people trust your product?
Ivan: instead of trying to earn trust in buckets or Rivers - try to earn trust in drops it becomes easy, you'll have to keep doing the same thing again n again it compounds
How do you disrupt tech giants? ( Asked him this since they are disrupting Google doc n Microsoft doc)
Ivan: when you are trying to do something better than existing tech giants, there is no product moat
The only way you win is by innovating and evolving faster than the tech giants just because they are giants they can't move faster
If you have any thoughts or tips share them in the comments :)
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